


{throwing flares into your night}

by falsemurmur



Category: Lost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsemurmur/pseuds/falsemurmur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Maybe Kate Austen wasn’t optimistic and maybe (like the worst of mankind) she was entirely capable of forging any one of the apocalyptic signs, but Jack had so often been the water to her fire that she couldn’t not believe in his capacity to overcome these winds that urged his will to live a life in which she didn‘t exist.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	{throwing flares into your night}

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Current music:**|   
[Missy Higgins](http://www.last.fm/music/Missy+Higgins) \- [Hold Me Tight](http://www.last.fm/music/Missy+Higgins/_/Hold+Me+Tight) | Powered by [Last.fm](http://www.last.fm/)  
  
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**Entry tags:**|   
[character-centric: kate austen](http://community.livejournal.com/wings_for_craft/tag/character-centric:+kate+austen), [pairing: jack/kate](http://community.livejournal.com/wings_for_craft/tag/pairing:+jack/kate), [tv: lost](http://community.livejournal.com/wings_for_craft/tag/tv:+lost), [type: oneshot](http://community.livejournal.com/wings_for_craft/tag/type:+oneshot)  
  
  
_**{throwing flares into your night}**_  
**title: **{throwing flares into your night}  
**fandom: **LOST  
**summary: **_Maybe Kate Austen wasn’t optimistic and maybe (like the worst of mankind) she was entirely capable of forging any one of the apocalyptic signs, but Jack had so often been the water to her fire that she couldn’t not believe in his capacity to overcome these winds that urged his will to live a life in which she didn‘t exist._  
**characters/pairings:** Kate Austen, Jack/Kate  
**genre(s): **Angst/Romance  
**rating: **PG-13  
**note:** speculation for 5x15. since 5x14 aired, i've pondered on jack wanting the plane crash not to happen since without it, he wouldn't have known any of the passengers (read: kate!) and i began this fic, but got stuck. then i saw a promo in which kate begs this question to jack and i was able to finish the fic! enjoy. :)

~*~

The thought burned in the back of her throat. Didn’t boil. No, she wouldn’t let it boil.

But she couldn’t just sit there, across from him, blood seeping from his nose, bruises forming on his neck. She couldn’t look at him as he spewed about changing everything, changing their pasts and altering their futures while wounds shook his health and she wondered about cleaning up his blood. She still cared.

“If we can do what Faraday our plane never crashes, flight 815 lands in Los Angeles and…everyone we lost since we got here…they’d all be alive.”

The thought burned her, boiled over.

“And what about us?  We’d just go on living our life because we’ve never met?”

“All the misery that we’ve been through, we’d just wipe it clean. Never happen.”

“It was not all misery.”

“Enough of it was.”

She knew she had hurt him (and let’s be honest, he has hurt her, too), still, wasn’t it worth something?

It wasn’t just about him (Jack, to be exact). It was about everyone who affected her life. But it was also about every life she had affected. And she knew he had the right to--no, he didn’t have the right. Not when he said he loved her, not when he promised her a future, and maybe their present was racked with troubles, frustration, resentment, and regrets and who knew if their future would be any better? Who knew if they even had a future to begin with?

Kate wasn’t one for believing in something so far away and bleak, but she wasn’t going to tear at the world’s fabrics before having the opportunity to thread her own pieces of the world. Everything was about chance, and Jack, Jack of all people was willing to unravel it all before it unfolded. The less faith he had in them, the less faith she had in him, and so maybe, maybe he had a point.

Except, she knew him better than that. She knew when he was speaking his peace and she knew when he was speaking from his darkest embers of regret, and this wasn’t about him finally letting her go. That would require jealousy to be extinguished (this was yet to happen--she’d noticed Jack’s shoulders tighten when she spoke to Sawyer). That would require Jack not to spit venom when speaking her name (this wasn’t the case--he laced her name with poison). That would require him to look her in the eyes for longer than seven seconds (this had yet to occur--he always flitted his eyes away or blinked too quickly).

Perhaps their love, hers and Jack’s, that thing from what now felt ages ago, torn and grey from wildfires and earthquakes and floods--perhaps their love was a lost cause. She had yet to associate the term _lost cause_ with Jack Shephard, however, despite the tragedy he encompassed off the island.

She knew it meant something, so maybe Kate Austen wasn’t optimistic and maybe (like the worst of mankind) she was entirely capable of forging any one of the apocalyptic signs, but Jack had so often been the water to her fire that she couldn’t not believe in his capacity to overcome these winds that urged his will to live a life in which she didn‘t exist.

And yes, it was the tiniest bit selfish. It was her being accustomed to having him on her side, to having him love her despite everything, and it was difficult to grasp a time in which Jack Shephard wasn’t in love with her.

*

She turned to Sawyer (and she could hear Jack’s voice in the back of her head going, “of course you went to Sawyer” but as always, she pretended Jack’s echo wasn’t always trailing her) and all Sawyer could do was look her in the eyes for five…nine…eleven…fourteen seconds before breathing in and shaking his head.

“Sorry Freckles,” he said, and turned his head, “Juliet and I have problems of our own, but don’t worry, the Doc won’t get far.”

She was surprised when she didn’t run after him, screaming “this is a priority--we can’t change the past!” because she knew she didn’t come first to Sawyer. She just didn’t know if this didn’t drag her heart down because she was already carrying the resentment of Jack not putting her first, or because she didn’t want Sawyer putting her first anymore.

Still, it did reverberate in her when she realized the men who once squared their jaws and clenched their fists to prevent harm or imprisonment to come to her, were turning their backs to her.

She felt so second place for a moment there that she remembered how she’d left Aaron to search out her son’s real mother, and despite how unselfish it seemed, she never felt more selfish in her life. Because the screaming veins below the surface of her skin had enough of the muffling and cover-ups, so she worked toward calming them for her sake. Or Aaron’s. Or…Claire or…Kate didn’t know. Everything was always a mess and the only fact was that she was alone now.

*

“Jack!” she screamed, running through the jungle.

She’d left him for less than an hour, with Hurley and Miles, but they were nowhere to be seen. Everything froze, but finally her frantic eyes spotted the back of Jack’s head and she ran in his direction.

He was squatting, hunched over a square path of brown dirt, his fingers raking the dirt softly. She looked at Miles questioningly, but he shrugged, and she looked back at Jack.

She squatted next to him, extended her hand to his shoulder, but he flinched his shoulder out of the way before she touched him.

“Jack!” she screamed, despite him being right next to her, and he stood up, his eyes still cold and distant, staring at the patch of earth.

“We have to do this, Kate,” he muttered, and whatever love he had exorcised from himself, she mangled with her anger and threw back at him.

“What about us?” she screamed.

Kate Austen considered herself a fighter. She spent her whole life fighting things. Alone. No one to have her back, no one to believe in her for what she was rather than for what she could have been, no one to be disappointed instead of having the expectation of her to fail. No one to realize she wasn’t a rebellious contradiction when all along she was actually just Kate, someone who sometimes clawed and someone who sometimes liked to stand out in the grass and breathe in the air after the rains have stopped. Someone who sometimes made mistakes, and she was worthy of both forgiveness and repenting, like anyone else. To Jack, she’d always been Kate, and she could never willingly forget this. And she wouldn’t forget, not without a fight.

“Kate,” he said, half chuckling, half mocking her.

“No!” she screamed.

She turned him to her, gripped the sleeves of his Dharma jumpsuit, and dared him to look at her.

“You asked me to marry you. I said yes,” she said in a low, but harsh whisper, “that’s worth something.”

She was on the other side of the equation now, and this didn’t escape him. It would be cathartic if it weren’t so insane. She was his everything, but that was a lie. He didn’t let everything go, not even for Kate, and his entire was a downward spiral--a hilarious one at that, because he had everything in his palms but he crushed it for the most menial of reasons. There were real, tragic issues people had, but he threw it all out like a selfish coward. Like he was willing to do now. Yet, here she stood now, challenging him to confront things. To really confront them rather than cut them before they manifest.

Something tilted in the universe then.

She felt it the instant seven seconds passed but he stood staring at her, and her first thought was that he let go. Her second was to walk away. Her third was to keep a lock on his eyes.

“Jack,” she breathed out and he let out the smallest of smiles.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do Kate,” he said, blinking, a drop of a tear spreading over his right eyelash. “Everything…I…I don’t know. Coming on this island, leaving, coming back…what for? I don’t know what I was thinking…I don’t know what to think.”

They stood still at his pause, their heads whirling with questions, regrets, and that which was so unknown. Most of all, she shook with the echoes of her memories of Jack, of how they met and how they had no idea the road they would go on after meeting. They still didn’t know what would entail from there on, but she knew that there was a time when she was with Jack when everyone doubted his decisions and actions. There wasn’t a time--no, there wasn’t in time. She might have not agreed with his decisions at times, and that’s why she fought with him, and that’s why she accompanied him when he wouldn’t listen. Because either way, wrong or right, illogical or overly rational, they were in it together. Whether trying to rescue each other, or trying to capture or save someone else, or getting their stories straight--they were there.

He was her echo and she was his.

She held Jack’s hand, passed him a smile just as small, and told him, “I don’t know either. Neither of us do. But it all can’t be misery.”

He laughed at that, but nodded, and he pulled her into a tight hold, just for a few seconds, but it was a breath free from the known and unknown.


End file.
